RIP: Eric Forth

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...In the 1980s his Commons office was adorned with a
full-frontal poster of the buxom model Samantha Fox (a present from his teenage
daughter); and in 1988 he spearheaded opposition to Clare Short's bill to ban
"page three" nudity, insisting that topless models had chosen "to display for
profit whatever assets they possess… and exploit the male population"...

...He was, naturally, a thorn in the side of the new Tory leader,
asking him pointedly at a private meeting earlier this year: "I believe in lower
taxes, grammar schools and big business, Mr Cameron. Am I still a
Conservative?"...

Eric Forth
(Filed: 19/05/2006)

Eric Forth, the MP for Bromley and Chislehurst who died of cancer
on Wednesday aged 61, was a flamboyant and combative Right-wing libertarian
renowned as the most effective tormentor of Labour ministers on the Tory
benches.

Tall, dark, and lean - and famous for his garish ties and
waistcoats, extravagant sideburns and chunky jewellery - Forth conveyed the
slightly menacing air of a reformed teddy boy. One sketch writer observed that
if he did not have L-O-V-E tattooed on one set of knuckles and H-A-T-E on the
other it must be because he was "saving the space for something ruder". Another
likened his appearance to that of a "Victorian undertaker out for a day at the
races".

Forth served in junior posts as consumer protection minister and
small firms minister under Mrs Thatcher, then was responsible for, successively,
schools and higher education under John Major. In opposition he served as Shadow
Leader of the House when Iain Duncan Smith was Conservative leader, during which
period he enjoyed weekly jousts with Robin Cook. But Forth's true talents lay in
his knowledge of Commons procedure and his mastery of the arts of political
knockabout.

His prime speciality was the filibuster. By driving debate late
into the evenings on Fridays, when MPs wanted to get back to their
constituencies, he so exhausted the government benches that at one point 200
Labour MPs signed a petition demanding action to curb Forth's antics. But his
motive was not to cause as much disruption as possible but to prevent the
passage of measures that had not been subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny.
If he felt that a bill had received due attention, even if he personally opposed
it, he did not stand in its way.

Forth was particularly suspicious of measures that won
cross-party support, and his well-organised guerrilla tactics scuttled a fleet
of private members' measures, including bills to end fur farming; to regulate
London minicab drivers; to regulate traders in the Royal Parks; and to alleviate
fuel poverty. The fact that the last three of these measures were promoted by
fellow Tories never weakened Forth's resolve. As a result of what he described
as "principled opposition to bad legislation", in 2000 Forth was chosen as
Opposition MP of the Year by the House Magazine.

He was defiantly politically incorrect from the moment he entered
Parliament in 1983, when he used his maiden speech to launch a scathing attack
on the Sex Equality Bill. In the 1980s his Commons office was adorned with a
full-frontal poster of the buxom model Samantha Fox (a present from his teenage
daughter); and in 1988 he spearheaded opposition to Clare Short's bill to ban
"page three" nudity, insisting that topless models had chosen "to display for
profit whatever assets they possess… and exploit the male population".

Contemptuous of "shillyshallying words that mean nothing", he
once advised a constituent who wrote to complain that his son could not afford
to buy a house in his consituency to "tell him to move to a grottier part of
town". While serving as consumer protection minister, he described staff at
Citizens Advice Bureaux as a "bunch of Trots". He never lacked intellectual
confidence.

Forth was regarded with suspicion by many on his own side. The
former ("wet") Tory MP for Cambridge, Robert Rhodes James, described him as
"unfit to be a minister" and was so appalled when Mrs Thatcher made him one in
1988 that he was said to have vowed never to vote for Mrs Thatcher in the
Commons again.

Forth was suspected of disloyalty by at least three party leaders
(during the most recent leadership contests, he supported Michael Portillo, and
then, when Portillo began taking a more liberal stance on homosexuals, switched
his support to David Davis). As Shadow Leader of the House, he took to
signalling his independence from the increasingly beleaguered Iain Duncan Smith
by making animated gestures behind his back during Prime Ministers' Questions -
to the delight of Labour MPs.

He was, naturally, a thorn in the side of the new Tory leader,
asking him pointedly at a private meeting earlier this year: "I believe in lower
taxes, grammar schools and big business, Mr Cameron. Am I still a
Conservative?"

But if some of his own side considered him an infernal nuisance,
they also recognised a decent, generous man and committed parliamentarian who
worked hard on behalf of his constituents and whose thuggish exterior concealed
a soft heart.

The son of a deputy harbourmaster, Eric Forth was born in Glasgow
on September 9 1944 and educated at Jordanhill College School, where he stood in
a mock election as a Communist, but later joined the Conservative Party. After
studying Politics and Economics at Glasgow University, he worked in junior
managerial positions for Rank Xerox, Burrough's Machines and then the Ford Motor
Company.

He began his political career in local government, as a member of
Brentwood Urban District Council, in 1968. In the 1974 general elections he
tried unsuccessfully to unseat the Labour MP Jo Richardson in Barking, an
impossible task which he performed with credit.

At this time he was strongly in favour of Britain's membership of
the EEC, and in 1979 he was elected Member of the European Parliament for North
Birmingham. He served as chairman of the backbench committee of the European
Democratic Group and distinguished himself - on the eve of a visit by Mrs
Thatcher to Italy - by forcing the Commission to reveal that the Italians had
been ignoring European Court rulings and getting away with it. By the time he
entered Parliament as MP for Mid-Worcestershire in 1983 he had become strongly
Eurosceptic.

In the mid-1980s he emerged as a member of the No Turning Back
group, formed to keep the revolution on track, and confirmed his Right-wing
credentials by voting in favour of hanging, supporting dialogue with the
white-run government of South Africa and warning against spending public money
on combating Aids, which he regarded as "largely self-inflicted".

If Margaret Thatcher hoped to discipline an unruly element in her
party by promoting him to ministerial office, she was only partly successful. As
consumer affairs minister, he won praise for introducing measures to curb sharp
practices by estate agents and for promoting the concept of corporate social
responsibility (he once refused to discuss giving BT a licence they wanted
unless they agreed to improve their services for the deaf); but he also drew
cross-party vitriol after helping to destroy a backbench measure that would have
given consumers greater protection when sold faulty goods.

As schools minister under John Major, Forth spearheaded the
government's drive against truancy and won praise for his sensitive handling of
special education, but was openly contemptuous of the Education Secretary John
Patten's plans for a "Mums' Army" of young teachers without degrees describing
the idea as "patronising and sexist".

After Forth's Mid-Worcestershire seat had disappeared in boundary
changes, in 1997 he returned to the House as MP for Bromley and Chislehurst.
Though he voted for William Hague in the final ballot in the subsequent
leadership election, he rejected a position on Hague's front bench team to "make
a positive contribution on the backbenches", and later - as a leading
"Portillista" - launched a scathing attack on Hague's leadership.

After Hague announced his support for an "election compact"
promoted by the Commission for Racial Equality in 2001, Forth was quoted as
saying at a private dinner: "All this sucking up to minorities is ridiculous;
there are millions of people in this country who are white, Anglo-Saxon and
bigoted and they need to be represented." He was one of four front benchers
dismissed by Michael Howard in 2003.

Forth served as chairman of the Thatcherite Conservative Way
Forward from 1997, and on the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee and the
House of Commons Commission. A keen Elvis Presley fan, he was treasurer of the
all-party Music Appreciation Group.

He remained an ebullient and effective performer to the last. He
was absent from the final Commons stages of the Climate Change and Sustainable
Energy Bill last week because of illness; he had opposed the Bill, and attempted
to filibuster its passage through Parliament. A valuable legacy of his time in
Parliament is the Parliamentary Resource Unit, a subscription briefing service
for backbenchers which he did much to promote and which has won widespread
praise.

Eric Forth was sworn of the Privy Council in 1996.

He married first, in 1967 (dissolved 1994), Linda St Clair, with
whom he had two daughters, and secondly, in 1994, Carroll Goff, who survives him
with his daughters and a stepson.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of
Telegraph Group Limited

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